Category Archives: mountain bike

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Will you dance?

For the Daily Prompt: filthy.

I am with my EX. He has that wicked trickster expression, which can mean fun or trouble or both.

“Let’s go.” he says, “Dancing. I have something new to show you.”

I go, warily, choosing boots rather than high heels. I love to dance, but I know that expression. There is a twist here. He is messing with me and I need to be careful.

He leads me into a park. We go through various sections and into a part with a rectangular green. The rectangle is broken by a hole in the corner, shaped like a billiard pocket. It is not very big and about 15 feet deep.

“Wait,” he says and goes down the steep muddy slope covered with leaves… and right into the mud covered wall, completely in. The earth struggles and then he pulls back out, covered with dirt and filth, frankly. It stinks. He taps a grayish structure beside him, and it lights up with soft light and starts playing a Charleston. It also moves a little, parts moving against each other, more awkward blobs than humanoid. And around me, three other statues also light up and move.

And my EX is climbing back up the muddy wall towards me and sinking in up to his waist with each step. He will be at the top soon. The Charleston is a cheap tinny version.

I am trying to decide: Will I dance?

I wake up.

Will you dance?

I took the photograph in 2014. My daughter was on the Killer Whale Mountain Bike Team. This is her coach, annoyed because he had to drop out of the race. He was riding with a belt chain, but the mud was so deep that it packed the chain and he couldn’t ride. My daughter finished the race but said that there were many sections that they just picked up their bikes and tried to run through thick sticky mud six or more inches deep.

 

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Does back pain mean a disc?

Does back pain mean a disc?

Does sciatica, pain down the sciatic nerve, all the way down the leg, mean a lumbar disc is out of position and you need back surgery?

Ninety nine times out of one hundred: No.

No? What? Really? Doesn’t back pain and sciatic pain mean a disc is pressing on the nerve?

Nope.

Sciatica means that the nerve is annoyed. It is sending pain signals. It can be irritated and inflamed anywhere along the entire path of the nerve. When the nerve is inflammed or there is surrounding inflamation, the nerve sends pain signals.

But… if it is not a disc, WHAT IS IT?

Muscles that are injured, inflamed, irritated, contracted or torn, that in turn put pressure on or inflame the nerve.

The sciatic nerve is made up of multiple nerve roots coming from the spinal cord: L3, L4, L5, S1, S2, S3. And then variants. The nerve roots bundle together and then dive through a group of muscles and go down the back of the leg: deep in the muscles. Why deep? To protect this very big, very important, bundle of nerves. Branches veer off and innervate muscles and bone and tendon and fascia, all the way down to the toes. There is not a spinal column in the leg, to protect this nerve.

It dives in between the superior gemellus and the piriformes muscle, deep in the buttock. Under the gluteus maximus and the gluteus minimus. Then it goes down the leg, under the semitendonosus muscle and the biceps femoris muuscle, the big hamstrings.

Now, let’s go back up to the low back. Why does it hurt? With or without sciatica? There are six layers of muscles in the back, all way smaller than those hamstrings. The top is the latissimus dorsi, down 5 more layers to the small longus and brevis rotares muscles, which connect each vertebral bone and allow subtle and complex movements of the spine.

What happens when a muscle is torn or injured? People look blank in clinic when I ask. I say, “Think of a piece of steak, what happens when you cut it?” They still look blank. “It BLEEDS, right?” When a muscle is torn or injured and bleeds, it and the surrounding muscles cramp up as much as they can, to try to prevent further bleeding and tearing. If it is an extremity, ace wrap, elevate and ice, as soon as possible, to slow the swelling and bleeding and pain. If it is the lower back muscles, ice as soon as possible and applying pressure won’t hurt. No heat for 48 hours since muscle bleeding and swelling and inflammation usually peak at 48 hours. After 48 hours apply heat, then gently stretch, then ice after stretching.

Think of the muscle fibers as torn. They take about 6 to 8 weeks to fully heal. You want to stretch them and rehabilitate them without tearing them in that 6-8 weeks. You want every muscle to be fully functional, to be the right length, to not heal shortened or scarred. Get those fibers working again…

….or….

But doctor, my back has been hurting for FIVE YEARS!

Then it will take longer than 6 to 8 weeks to rehabilitate, retrain the muscles, gently break down the scar tissue, get it all functioning. Your muscles are doing their best. They told you they were hurt and you need to listen to them.

Covering it up with ibuprofen or alcohol or any number of substances or trying to ignore what your muscles are trying to tell you is a bit counter productive, don’t you think? Pain is information. An advil can help with the pain, but it does NOT fix the problem. “Drug me so that I can go on ignoring it.”…. uh, no. That is not ethical and it also doesn’t work.

And just think, if those back muscles continue tighter and tighter… they are constricting and pulling on the spinal bones.Β  They pull on those bones and then a disc might be thinned or crushed and might protrude and then press on a nerve. And then for surgery, what do they do to get to the disc? Cut through the six layers of muscle….

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S is for sloth

S is for sloth, the sixth of our seventh sins.

I took the photograph of my daughter a few weeks ago. She can’t be accused of sloth, though, because that was the day after a 12 mile mountain bike race. She came in first in the women’s 18-26 division. She also came in last, because she was the only one….

Dictionary.com at present:
1. habitual disinclination to exertion; indolence; laziness.
2. any of several slow-moving, arboreal, tropical American edentates of the family Bradypodidae, having a long, coarse, grayish-brown coat often of a greenish cast caused by algae, and long, hooklike claws used in gripping tree branches while hanging or moving along in a habitual upside-down position.
3. a pack or group of bears.

Webster 1913:
1. Slowness; tardiness.
These cardinals trifle with me; I abhor This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome. Shak.
2. Disinclination to action or labor; sluggishness; laziness; idleness.
[They] change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth. Milton.
Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears. Franklin.
3. Zool. Any one of several species of arboreal edentates constituting the family Bradypodidae, and the suborder Tardigrada. They have long exserted limbs and long prehensile claws. Both jaws are furnished with teeth (see Illust. of Edentata), and the ears and tail are rudimentary. They inhabit South and Central America and Mexico.

Just think of meeting a sloth of bears, eating blueberries, in the summer… I would not feel slothful then. And looking at the examples from Webster 1913, are we more slothful and sloppy with language than Franklin and Milton?

S

Sloth is a sin… but my daughter earned her rest…. and we all need to relax and rest sometimes and change our course to pleasure, ease and sloth…..

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J is for joy

J is for joy.

Do you feel joy sometimes? Are you joyous? Joyful?

From Webster 1913: The passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good; pleasurable feelings or emotions caused by success, good fortune, and the like, or by a rational prospect of possessing what we love or desire; gladness; exhilaration of spirits; delight.

From dictionary.com: the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation.

I took the photograph two weekends ago. My daughter was racing, category 2 mountain bike race, three laps, four miles each. I was walking the course backwards with a friend. We had to be alert and step off the path every time a rider was coming. There were around 100 riders in category 2, all ages, men and women. We stopped to take photographs and cheer for everyone and especially our team!

A rider on the first lap had an asthma attack from all the pollen, and we walked him back out. I walked the bike while he concentrated on breathing. We stopped again to take pictures and then he could ride out. I walked on, listening for bikes, and there were trillium along the path….

I don’t think I can feel joy unless I also admit grief and all of the other feelings. It’s like weather, emotions come and go and may or may not feel like they make sense. If we refuse a feeling, it just seems to get stronger and rather panicky and keep bothering us…. until we treat it like the guest in Rumi’s poem.

Grief comes, and can be sweeping our mind clean for a new joy.

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E for Envy

E for envy. Envy is the second of the 7 sins. Perhaps a sin, but we are all human. I think that we all have the full spectrum of feelings. It is not a matter of refusing to feel something: that does not work well. My minister speaks of when we feel very virtuous and raised up, that is when we are most in danger of treating others badly, and he quotes Luke.

Luke 11:43 “Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. 44″Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. 45″Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.”

Is the unclean spirit a feeling that we think is a sin or a feeling we interpret as bad or evil? That could be one interpretation.

In contrast, Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi in The guesthouse says:

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!

And why welcome and entertain them all?

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

—–translation by Coleman Barks

So: envy

noun, plural envies.
1. a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another’s advantages, success, possessions, etc.
2. an object of such feeling:
Her intelligence made her the envy of her classmates.
3. Obsolete. ill will.
verb (used with object), envied, envying.
4. to regard (a person or thing) with envy: She envies you for your success. I envy your writing ability.
He envies her the position she has achieved in her profession.

E

I did Gallery Walk in our downtown on Saturday. We are blessed with artists and there were many pieces that I liked. I did not buy any. I ended up in a small shop with singing bowls. The owner sells them but he also has a set that he keeps. He started to play the bowls, each on it’s small cushion. I have three bowls, smaller ones, that I have bought over the years. I love the ring and the resonance and the held note. But I learned something new: he used the felted end of the mallet and could make the bowl sing another way. I have never seen this before. Some bowls sing a different note with the felt. I covet the large deep bowls: I bought the largest one I could afford five years ago. But his are gorgeous in sound. I looked at a price tag. Ten times the cost of the one I bought.

He also explained that different notes are used for healing and for the different chakras. The size and the thickness of the bowl affects the note, whether it is high or low, whether it rings. The metal affects it as well and he has a bowl with meteorite. A full set would be seven, though many people use sets of three that sing together.

I bought mine separately, so I came home to try whether any would sing with felt and whether they are tuned to each other. They are tuned, but I cannot make them sing with the felt yet. I will take them to him for a lesson…. I am envious of his bowls….

And the photo is my daughter, at the end of a twelve mile mountain bike race Sunday. She does not even look tired! I am envious of how in shape she is: she swims three to five miles six days a week during swim season and exercises most days. I am just starting to build back up, but I am unlikely to catch up with her! Envy… I am hoping that it will motivate me to exercise more….

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Cindy gets real and skips the ball

We had a lovely dinner with family and friends. I look at the tablecloths and napkins that I have inherited and I am glad that I live in a time where I can work as a female physician and am not embroidering elaborate tablecloths and napkins. Some of the ones that I have WERE done by female relatives. Amazing and work that is currently not very valued.

So my centerpiece was an acknowledgement of the changes: Cindy is not going to ride in the coach. She has a canoe and paddles and a backpack, sleeping bag, stove, water bottle and GPS. She is going to find her own way and paddle her own canoe.